Council leaves shutdown businesses in the dark

By ABC Ballarat

Over a week ago, 15 Ballarat businesses were ordered to vacate their premises within 48 hours after being deemed a fire risk. The owner of one of those businesses Nigel Kaye has told ABC Local Radio's Steve Martin the council didn't tell the business owners how they could remedy the situation until last Friday.

Mr Kaye, who purchased the go-karts and Laserforce game business just six weeks ago, says things were made clearer before the weekend.

"We were all kept in the dark, so we were all having meetings every couple of days to see if anyone was aware of anything but we were all pretty much in the dark."

Mr Kaye says the main problem with the premises of his business was that it had false ceilings installed, which were apparently covering the sprinkler system.

"So what we've now done is removed all of our false ceiling allowing the sprinklers to be able to, if there was a fire, for it to be able to reach the actual fire on the ground rather than just wet the ceiling."

But he says there's still no certainty about when the system will be checked and declared up to code or otherwise.

"What's frustrating is this could have been done a long time ago, while businesses were running."

Instead, the 15 businesses were given 48 hours to vacate the buildings.

"It could have been simple to explain to us that all it needed was the sprinkler system to be retested.

"The business owner believes it all works fine but it just hasn't been certified being so old, so it's quite frustrating."

Mr Kaye says the level of uncertainty among business owners has been stressful, but they're helping keep each others' spirits up.

"From our discussions, we're really hoping to be open by Friday. But we're in everyone else's hands, we can only do so much.

"We're not sure when these tests are being done or when council can come through again to confirm that they're happy with the work being done."